This month’s edition is an absolute explosion of a Vietnam War story, featuring hints of Tim O’Brien and Tobias Wolff and what might be our favorite Works Progress title yet.
See you in the New Year. More great stories TK.
-The Editors
He had the drop, the time, a reason, but, maybe, not the inclination. He did, though. He shot the other soldier, dead between the eyes, the first time he’d pulled a trigger since basic, and his friends come running, marveling at the perfect hole the bullet made between the other soldier’s open eyes.
They take the rifle, the ammo, the smokes, the boots, and he, well, he took the life, didn’t he? He also takes a photograph, spying the square edge of yellow sticking out of the other soldier’s front shirt pocket. He takes a photograph of a smiling man, impossibly young, holding a smiling little girl and slips it into his own empty front shirt pocket, and then, he goes back to war.
There’s blood everywhere, all the time, so dark you’d swear it was oil, spurting out of the ground, enough to make the whole world rich, and when there isn’t blood, there’s rain, not enough to wash anything away, just enough to rot your feet, your toes, to make you dream you’re drowning, to douse the orange glow at the edge of your fingers. Just as well, you weren’t supposed to smoke at night anyway, that’s what almost got his head blown off the night he killed the other soldier who didn’t fire first.
So it went on, and on and on, and half his friends are dead and a whole country and he’s not and doesn’t know why and he can’t think about it because everyone was so worried for so long about him now that he’s back home, now that they can see him, can put their hands on his shoulders and hear his heart beating and know he’s alive, he can’t have them worry anymore.
So he pretends and sometimes it works, sometimes he’s not pretending, sometimes he’s okay. And when he’s not okay he thinks about all the people who are nothing at all and so he has to be okay, and lets his hair grow and gets a job and wears long sleeves and nobody asks about what happened to him, but they all want to know, he can see it in their eyes, but if he told them, it would just be a story, a familiar one, about death and guts and screaming and the endless fear that got so deep inside he took it for breathing, for living and so he doesn’t tell, not anyone alive, anyway. He tells the other soldier, the one in the photograph he keeps in his front shirt pocket, the one he has to take out whenever he goes to sleep at night, or, whenever he crawls in bed. Sleep only comes after he’s investigated every shadow, every corner and noise, after he’s apologized to the little girl for killing her father. He doesn’t apologize to the soldier, he had no choice, or if he had a choice, it wasn’t a good one, and the other soldier would understand, so he apologizes to her, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, until the words are nothing but sound pushed out into the air and every day he wakes up with her on the backs of his eyelids, whispering, Please, little girl, leave me alone.
But she never does and it’s not enough, and so he goes to the wall with all the names stretching out-out-out like dead fingers, and finds a spot that seems right, or maybe he just got tired of walking and leaves the photograph of the little girl and the father he killed in a Ziploc bag under a line of names with a note that says, I’m sorry, and he goes back home and for a while it’s okay. He’s gotten so good at pretending, for a while he’s alright and the little girl is still there, yes, but like movement at the edges of your vision, something you decide not to turn and find.
And then there’s a book, a book in the window of a shop he passes every day, a book with a photograph of a photograph of a little girl inside a Ziploc bag, and he thinks, I’ll just find a new way, I’ll just find a longer way home, but his feet and his body and his lungs won’t allow it, and he thinks, eventually the window will change out, they’ll find something else people want to read, something more cheery. Eventually they do, but the absence of the photograph just reminds him of the empty space inside his front shirt pocket. So he contacts the author of the book and asks her to help and it’s a great story, familiar, about death and guts and screaming and endless fear and contrition and the hope for redemption, the hope for forgiveness, and she says yes and for years, literal years, nothing happens, or at least, no one tells him.
One day, he gets a call, there was an article, a review, from when the book first came out, and this article, this strip of newspaper, made its way from America, across the ocean, 8000 miles, to Hanoi, where it was wrapped around the day’s catch of snakehead fish, and transported, and laid out in a market and sold to a woman who brought it home, unwrapped it, and saw, through damp ink and paper, a picture of her neighbor as a little girl. This woman knew a man who had a son who worked for the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, and this woman contacted her neighbor, who asked her to contact this man she knew, who contacted his son, who contacted a dozen people in America, who contacted a dozen more people before one contacted the author and the author contacted the man who shot and killed the father of the little girl who was not a little girl anymore.
It took days and months and finally, the man is there, here, meters away from the home in the village of the daughter of the man he killed. The other soldier, who had the drop, the time, a reason, but not the inclination to fire first, and the man is shaking, he can feel every drop of blood in his body quivering. This is a new kind of fear, a living, breathing one, not just a memory, and the man has written down what he’s going to say. He’s written down all the things he’s always felt but never said. He has them in his front shirt pocket, where the photograph of the smiling little girl used to be, and he worries, he’s afraid, he’s terrified, that the moment he pulled the trigger, the first time since basic, the moment he squeezed the trigger and shot a bullet that exploded into the face, the brain, dead between the eyes, of the other soldier, the man is absolutely sure that he tore that smile away from the little girl forever. How do you apologize for taking something you have no right to, ending any future happiness with a flex of your hand? How do you say sorry, how do you explain, I had to, I had no choice, when the other soldier made that choice you insist did not exist?
The man’s heart is beating so loudly, so relentlessly, he thinks he won’t make it, he thinks he’ll have waited all these years, all these hours and days and moments only to drop dead at the feet of the little girl who is no longer a little girl. And maybe that would be fitting, maybe that’s what she wants, maybe that would be justice, but he must say sorry first, what little that means, he must look her in the eye and apologize.
And then, there she is, he knows it’s her, could be no one else. There she is, looking at him, nothing in her face, just looking. And the man looks down, forces his shaking fingers to reach into his front shirt pocket, to unfold the words he’s spent decades forming. He coughs, once, twice, all he can hear is the boom of his heart. His mouth opens, closes, his eyes meet the little girl all grown up. I’m sorry, he whispers, I’m sorry and, suddenly, her arms are around him, squeezing, her cheek pressing against his chest. She’s speaking words he doesn't understand but the heat in her voice sparks like a camera flash and he is lit up, all the dark places bathed in light and he can hear the beat of her heart, mixing with his. After years, ever since that day he took another man’s life away, after years of being closed to the world lest something reach inside and hurt him again, the man unfolds himself, leaves his heart exposed, to fold around her, cupping her head with his hand, resting his chin on her hair, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, again and again, I’m so so sorry.
There is a woman, the neighbor, she walks towards them, puts her hand on the man’s shoulder. She says she is happy, the neighbor tells him. She says seeing you is like seeing the spirit of her father returning. She says — the neighbor stops, listens. He can feel the woman who is no longer a little girl lift her head, urging the neighbor on, to keep speaking and so the neighbor does, a tremble in her voice. She says, the neighbor breathes in, she says she is furious. She says seeing you is like being shot, like a hole as big as the world is ripping through her. The same hole she felt that day, the day she found out her father was taken away. She says, seeing you — She is losing him, her father, all over again. She is never not losing him. She says — and the man is undone, totally, completely. He wants to scream, please little girl, leave me alone, but all that comes out is a sob and when his knees buckle and he looks up she is still there, and he can see it, at the corners of her mouth, the ghost of a smile, the smile he stayed up nights watching, pleading to, asking for something, anything. He watches it rise until it pools in her eyes, and he knows, what he stole from her was never replaced, could never be. The hole as big as the world is still inside her. He remembers the perfect bullet hole he made between the other soldier’s eyes, the soft sizzle of a cigarette extinguishing, the corner of yellow in the soldier's pocket. The inclination, the reason, the time, the drop.
-30-
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She lives in Graham, NC with her cats, James Cagney and Janis Joplin.